10 Unexpected And Surprising Horror Movie Sequels

When certain movie follow-ups came out of nowhere, and were either terribly good or terribly bad.

Halloween 3 Season of the Witch
Universal Pictures

Horror is undoubtedly the one genre where a hit movie can quickly become a franchise, as studios look to capitalise on the success of a popular film and milk it for all its worth.

Over the years, while it’s fair to say viewers have been subjected to some fine examples of sequels, where certain films have been enhanced by being revisited and deeper elements of the story are explored, it’s also fair to say that moviegoers have been served some real forgettable duds at the same time.

Many of the successful horror franchises we have to come to know and love have often gone on to churn out repetitive and unimaginative follow-on films as the years have gone by. However, every now and then a film also comes along which rips up the rulebook and takes a left-field turn that surprises and amazes an audience, while others arrive at a time that a sequel to a certain movie seemed unimaginable.

With that in mind, here are ten films which rightly or wrongly made cinemagoers sit up and take notice.

10. Lost Boys: The Tribe

Halloween 3 Season of the Witch
Warner Premiere

The Lost Boys (1987) is one of the most beloved vampire movies of all time, featuring a near perfect cast executing a near perfect script. Then some 21 years later came a sequel that absolutely nobody asked for. The story this time focuses on a gang of surfing vampires, and gone is the subtle slow build of the first movie, as in the opening scene they kill another vampire, using god awful dialogue as they decapitate him before playing football with his head.

In Lost Boys: The Tribe, Chris (Tad Hilgenbrink) and his sister Nicole (Autumn Reeser) move to the coast so that he can follow his dream of making it as a pro surfer, setting up a typical fish out of water story that somewhat mirrors the first movie. Chris meets vampire surfer Shane (Angus Sutherland) and he and his sister are invited to a house party where Shane infects Nicole, damning her to a life as an immortal bloodsucker.

The plot then basically revolves around a race against time by Chris and returning vampire hunter Edgar Frog (Corey Feldman), to save her soul by killing the head vampire before she feeds for the first time. The script is poor throughout, and gone are the superb practical effects of the original, replaced with below par scenes of CGI. There are Easter egg nods to the original littered throughout, but these moments are all too little in justifying the film as a worthwhile extension of The Lost Boys saga.

Contributor
Contributor

Connoisseur of Alternative Music & Cult Movies. Freelance writer covering the Rock & Metal music scenes, and the Horror, Sci-Fi and Fantasy Film & Tv genres.